Charles Kegan Paul, one of the most famous Victorian publisher, commented on the book market in a lecture:
"Let it be carefully remembered that not every book which has a literary has also a commercial value; and that one is not necessarily in any degree the measure of the other. If a book is transcendently good on any subject, it will, no doubt, sooner or later, succeed; if it is bad, it will sometimes succeed because of its very badness - it may appeal to the vulgar, or the base, or the trivial. If the writer not be a Robertson as a preacher, or a Macaulay as a historian, a George Eliot as a novelist, or a Browning as a poet, if he be one of the average public who has written a fairly good book, success will depend on whether the book at the moment hits the fancy of the public or supplies a want just then felt: it rarely creates the demand." (my emphasis)
- From a lecture entitled "The Production and Life of Books" at the Albert Institute, Windsor, published in the Fortnightly Review, vol. 33, no. 196 (April 1, 1883), p. 487.
